Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

I don’t know if you remember “chain mail” when you were a kid? You would receive a letter from someone you had never heard of and you had to write to five of your friends to keep the chain going – if you broke it, the consequences were too horrible to contemplate.

Well if you think about it, this was the earliest form of viral marketing and it is now commonplace on the net.

My good friend and fellow Top Sales Expert, Jill Konrath of Selling To Big Companies, just tagged me to share 8 random things about myself, so here they are:

1. I have just launched the Sales Practitioners Group and the first initiative – Sales Leadership Zone will be live on September 11th (Full details next week)
2. I have an intolerance to lactose, which is a real pain as I love cheese!
3. I cycled over 2000 miles last year.
4. I am a sports fanatic and had the opportunity to play both soccer and cricket professionally.
5. I have supported Manchester United for over 50 years.
6. I wish I had studied harder at school as my dream was to go to Oxford/Cambridge University. Now I am living my dream through my son Joe
7. I am a member of MENSA but I only attended one meeting and left after ten minutes because the people were so humourless and boring
8. Although I am a confirmed Francophile, my dream is to live permanently in Cape Town (Watch this space!)

Now, I pass on the tags to:

• Andrea Nierenberg – World-class networking guru and global traveller
• Kevin Eikenberry – Remarkable friend and exceptionally talented author
• Chris Knight – “The Man” – Mr EzineArticles and entrepreneur extraordinaire
• Douglas Hanna –  Customer relationship guru and my ex-editor at b5
• George Petri – “Sales Visionary” and savvy businessman

Check out their sites. These are all really smart individuals.

And now more about Jill Konrath and Sales Shebangs – but to ensure that you receive correct information, let Jill tell you all about this sales event of the year herself………….

A Community for Women Who Sell!

Sales Shebang is for all the smart, savvy women who sell.

We’re here to help you be even more successful—perhaps even unstoppable!

Attend our first ever conference on November 5-6th in Minneapolis. You’ll get fresh ideas, unique insights, inspiration and practical information to help you:

• Capture lucrative new accounts.
• Accelerate your sales cycle.
• Create value for your customers.
• Catapult past your competitors.
• Do all this without going crazy!

You’ll learn all this from an all star cast of top sales experts who know what it takes to achieve extraordinary success. Plus the connections you make will be worth their weight in gold.

The Sales Shebang kicks off the night before with a comedy performance not to be missed! You’ll want to come early, enjoy the fun and start networking..

You can find full details by clicking on the banner in the left hand column.

That’s it for this week - have a great w/e wherever you are in the world! - JF

The JF Guest Author Spot

“My Cousin Vinnie - The Master Sales Professional” by Jim Meisenheimer 

Actually, Vinnie isn’t my Cousin - but he is a genuine salesman.

I’ve got a question for you. Are you in shape? Are you in really good shape? If not, why not?

It’s important for you to be in top physical condition. But that’s not with this article is about. This article is about increasing your sales. What kind of “Shape” is your sales presentation in? On a 1-10 scale, how are your customers rating your sales presentation?

I love to watch salespeople in action. I can’t help it. So, two weeks ago when our cruise ship arrived in St. Thomas, I had the opportunity to observe more than a dozen salespeople. Bernadette, my wife, loves to shop. She came prepared with a list of gifts she wanted to buy for the upcoming holidays. There¹s no stopping Bernadette when she has a list.

I don’t remember how many jewelry stores we visited. I do remember, however, one in particular. The store’s name is Dazzlers, a duty-free shop, within two blocks of our ship the Golden Princess. Vinnie was our salesman. Here are several observations:

He was friendly.

He was very patient.

He smiled and gestured easily.

He asked good questions and kept showing Bernadette different pieces of jewelry.

He took the initiative and walked briskly from display case to display case.

He never asked for permission and he just kept bringing more things for my wife to see, touch, and try on, each time getting closer to what she was looking for.

He called another store and asked them to rush over another piece of jewelry that Bernadette asked about.

He was expecting to make a sale.

He said it would take three to five minutes for the piece to be delivered to his store.

Bernadette said, “We’ll go for a beer and come back in a half-hour.” In what seemed to be “Faster than a speeding bullet,” Vinnie reached under the counter and took out two ice-cold cans of Coors Light. He just hit a home run as far as I was concerned.

That was one very smooth move. I told Vinnie the last time I saw a move like that was in 1969. While stationed in Vietnam, I had the opportunity to take R & R in Hong Kong. I told him, while having two suits made for me the tailor opened his bar and offered me a drink. Vinnie told us his life story, quickly, including how his father during the 1960s was a tailor in Hong Kong and how he always offered his customers cocktails while they were waiting. It really is a small world.

Vinnie did a good job and we rewarded him with two sales. His sales presentation was in good shape. What kind of shape is your sales presentation in?

Can you recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Of course you can. Can you recite your favorite poem, psalm, or song? Of course you can, and why is that? It’s probably because you know the words. No one ad-libs the words to the “Pledge” or the words to their favorite song. It’s unthinkable.

Can you recite how you make appointments when using the telephone?

Can you recite your ten best open-ended questions?

Can you recite four benefits of your key product?

Can you recite how you deal with the price objection?

Can you recite how you ask for the business?

There’s a huge difference between being prepared and sounding canned - huge! You’re more likely to sound canned when you don’t prepare, because everyone usually says the same thing in similar situations.

The Gettysburg address was not an improvisation. Your favorite Prayer is not an improvisation.

The Pledge of Allegiance is not an improvisation. Wouldn’t you sound better if your entire sales presentation was not an improvisation?

In the military you often hear “You’d better shape up or ship out.” If you shape up your sales presentation you won’t have to worry about shipping out unless of course you decide to book a cruise to St. Thomas.

Give my regards to Vinnie when you see him.

Let’s go sell something . . .

Jim Meisenheimer has worked with 496 corporate clients. Last year 83.3% of his sales training business was repeat business. Jim Meisenheimer, Inc. has achieved 18 consecutive years of increased sales and profitability. Author of seven books, Certified Professional Speaker (CPS), you can learn more about Jim and his Knock Out Selling Skills program at www.meisenheimer.com .

This was voted “Top Sales Article Of The Week” last week over at Top 10 Sales Articles

This is a pretty long post, but if you are responsible for developing a team or indeed, if you want to prompt your manager to recognise how good you really are, you will enjoy it. 

Even if salespeople have undergone progressive sales training, there’s no guarantee that they will be successful. It is common knowledge that skills grow rusty over time and salespeople are prone to pick-up bad habits along the way or to simply skip steps and take shortcuts that can lead to long-term trouble. Perhaps even more important these days, is the fact that markets, competition, technologies and customer preferences are all in a constant and accelerating state of change. This fact requires that sales people are able and willing to rethink their sales strategy and approach frequently and receive a regular top-up of skills and motivational coaching.

In-Field training and coaching is an ideal opportunity for the Sales Director or Sales Manager to assess the ongoing training needs of their team.

The Logical In-Field Training Sequence:

The logical approach to field accomplishment training, is to break the call plan down into three sections:

-Before the call.
-During the call.
-After the call.

Before The Call:

Ensure that the salesperson is thinking in terms of their customer’s issues by asking:
“What are the customer’s needs/issues?”
“What is their potential?”
“What is their turnover?”
“What is the trend – is turnover increasing year on year?”
“Are they affected by competition (if any)?”
“What are their current commercial concerns?”
“What are their commercial objectives for this year?”

These questions ensure that the salesperson is aware that whilst the overall aim is to sell the company’s product, the prime objective of the sales call is to sell answers to issues and satisfy needs.

Having established the prime objective, the manager now needs to confirm that the salesperson is properly equipped to achieve them.

Further questioning should establish:

How will the call be opened?
Are they prepared for objections?
What questions are they going to ask to ascertain needs?
What benefits are they going to stress, and how?
What sales aids will they be using?
Are they prepared to ask for the order or gain a commitment?
Have they all the necessary documentation?

During these questions, the manager should make a note of any variance in procedures or note points that have been omitted by the salesperson. The manager must now ensure that the salesperson fully understands and agrees the call plan. It may be necessary to rehearse or reinforce certain aspects of the call at this stage if there is an indication of doubt or uncertainty on the part of the salesperson.

At this stage, it is necessary for the manager to agree with the salesperson the part they intend to play during the call and how to best introduce them to the prospective client. They must also agree with the salesperson to what degree (if any) they are to be involved. To jump in, in order to save a sale, will put the manager in a very awkward situation - whether they succeed or fail, they cannot win. The golden rule is: Agree your role and stick to it.

During The Call:

Never present a double-front to the customer. Stand or sit tactfully to one side away from the salesperson/client.
Watch and listen for any deviation from the agreed call-plan.
What were the reasons for the changes?
What effect did they have on the client, or salesperson?
Is the situation as envisaged?
What is being done badly?
What is being done well?
Is there a specific improvement since the last accompaniment?

After The Call:

Human beings do not like to be told how bad they are - they need to be told how good they are and how better they could be. This is where the formula for effective field accompaniment is used to its best effect:

Ask – Teach – Tell – Check - Thank

The use of this formula embodied in a simple sequence will enable the skilful manager to achieve:
Cheerful acceptance of correction
Full understanding of the fault
Elimination of the fault
Correct method followed in future
Maintenance of goodwill
Two principles to remember when applying the formula and sequence are:
Curb yourself
Stick to priorities

Curb Yourself:

This takes self-discipline and constant awareness that you are dealing with a human being with feelings of their own. If the sales call was unsuccessful, then it is an even bet the salesperson is fully aware of their shortcomings in terms of effect i.e. they did not get the sale or a commitment to move to the next stage.The effect has already begun to hurt them most in terms of loss of earnings and achievement. Any reminders at this stage will only accelerate the demotivating forces of failure and create a barrier between the manager and the salesperson.

Stick To Priorities:

Ideally, aim at correcting one major weakness at a time. If the errors are numerous, it is far better to deal with them progressively during a series of meetings. Yet again highlighting a list of errors in one session will only reinforce their feelings of failure.

Praise Them:

Some managers are afraid to give praise because they feel it lowers their status. It does not lower the manager’s status at all. It establishes the manager’s right to give praise and makes them a bigger person in the eyes of their salespeople.

During the call, the manager is not only recording the weak points of a sales presentation, they are also noting the good. Keep praise factual, specific, and above all, sincere.

Question To Reveal: - Ask

At this stage, the manager needs to ask the salesperson:
“Where do you think we could have improved our presentation?”
or
“Where did we fail to convince our customer?”
or
“Where did we deviate from our agreed plan?”

N.B. Note the use of the words “we” and “our”.

By using these words, the manager is involving themselves with the salesperson’s shortcomings and not launching a direct attack. A self-diagnosed failing is easier for the ‘ego’ to accept and there is more of a chance that it will be remembered in the future. The manager needs to bear in mind that the salesperson may genuinely not know where they have gone wrong.

Skilful questioning coupled with tact will usually reveal these points.

Correct: - Teach & Tell

This is a selling job and offers an opportunity for the manager to use the experience gained by their own efforts and those they have observed from other salespeople during field accompaniments.They need to sell an improvement by teaching and telling the salesperson:
How they should do it.
Why they should do it.
What would happen if they did it.

In order to check the manager now needs to:

Question For Understanding:

People learn at varying speeds and if the training given is to be used effectively, then it needs to be fully understood i.e. “OK Bill, let us go through it again to ensure that we have fully understood it.” or “OK Bill, let us benefit from one more check before we try it out on our next customer”.

Check him on the “How”, the “Why” and the “What” would happen if … principles of training.

Habits:

Habits are formed by continuous practice, successful field training consists of getting salespeople to form good habits and we must ensure that the practice these good habits repeatedly. Check any tendency to depart from good habits from the beginning, ensure that they do not start bad work habits such as being late for appointments, untidy equipment, dirty car etc.

In Summary:

The success or failure of field training depends absolutely on the ability of the field trainer. If a salesperson fails it is through either bad selection or bad training.

Tomorrow: “My Cousin Vinnie - The Master Sales Professional”

The JF Guest Author Spot

“Increase Your Profits by Keeping More Customers!” by Colleen Francis
Who are your customers, and what do they really want?

Knowing the answer to this question can help you to keep your customers longer, sell them more products over time - and increase your profits by between 75–95%. Given that the potential rewards are so great, what can you do today to dramatically lower your rate of customer departures?

First, you need to understand where those big numbers are coming from. While the figures can vary from industry to industry, retaining more customers will result in significantly higher profits and revenues for three key reasons:

1. Selling more to existing customers is 5 to 15 times less expensive than acquiring new customers (less advertising, less direct mail costs…and much less time);
2. Loyal customers will often refer you to their family, friends and colleagues, further reducing the time and cost of acquiring new customers and closing new business; and
3. Every time you lose a customer it takes time - and effort - to find a replacement.

So how can you reduce your customer departure rate?

By keeping your customers happy. The key to keeping your customers happy is to know what they want, and then find the product that provides them the best possible value - that’s it.

I can’t tell you how many deals I’ve seen go sour when an over-exuberant salesperson on the brink of closing a big deal has blown it by saying something along the lines of: “Mr. Buyer, this product is exciting because not only will it give you A, B and C which you need, but also D, E, F and G!”

Adding bells and whistles to a presentation by offering features that the customer has not said they want will only create objections and foster doubt in the customer’s mind. Even worse, it may lead them to start asking themselves whether they are paying more for extra features they don’t require - just when they were about to place their first order.

To help you keep your customers happier and longer, try some of the following best practices carried out by firms that excel in client retention:

1. Measure your current status
A very effective technique is the “third-party interview.” While many customers often won’t tell you directly the things you most need to hear, they usually aren’t nearly so reticent - or so flattering - when a third party asks them for feedback. To find out what your customers really think of you, consider hiring a consulting or telemarketing firm to conduct a customer satisfaction survey on your behalf.

2. Confirm the criteria for success
Determine what’s most important to your customers, and make sure your definition of success is consistent with theirs. Sales people often mistakenly operate from what they think is important. Instead, try to identify your prospect’s true challenges, by asking leading, open-ended questions that allow the prospect to reveal their real needs, like:

“John, when I speak to executives like yourself, they often tell me that although their business is going great, they have concerns about (a problem your product addresses). Is this a problem for you?”

Or:

“Mary, when I speak to executives like yourself, they find that our products are able to solve problems in one of three areas: (specify three key issues your product addresses). Are these problems ones you can identify with?”

The key is to pick a few serious or common problems that your product can solve. That way, you are almost guaranteed your prospect will admit that they are having the same problem, and then you can follow up by asking them to be more specific about the problems they have. Remember that as a general rule, a salesperson should talk only 20-30% of the time, and listen the remaining 70-80%. This will help you determine which product features or benefits you should focus on - and which you shouldn’t.

3. Know your customers
To serve a good client well (and to decide which clients merit the best service), you need to fully understand their strategic direction, how they operate and who makes their decisions. You or your salespeople can collect this information by writing up account plans for your largest or most profitable accounts, including a review of their industry and revenue projections, as well as how you are positioned in the industry, the threats to your position, a plan to expand within the account, your most recent customer satisfaction survey results and a plan for building and maintaining executive relationships. Then, ask your salespeople to review the plan with your managers or executives, to get additional insights on how to maximize the opportunities presented.

4. Ask questions
Last but not least, remember that the most successful salespeople uncover specific problems, and then align their products as solutions to those problems - nothing more, nothing less. So what are the right questions to ask your prospects? The right questions are those that move them from an intellectual position of knowing they have a problem that needs to be solved, to an emotional state of trusting you to solve that problem in a way that will satisfy them. In other words, the right questions are ones that reveal true buying motivations, which will get the customer engaged in a real conversation.

Unfortunately, many customers have a tendency to become frustratingly vague when asked what’s most important to them. Their first instinct may be to respond with generic or cliché statements like “to do a good job,” “to work hard” or “to be sensitive to what the customer wants.”

These phrases lack specifics, so it is critical that you clarify exactly what they mean. If your customer becomes vague, try asking some of the following specific questions, designed to elicit very specific answers:

• What are your top three priorities defining the success of this project?
• Specifically, what is most important to you?
• When you reflect on this project, what needs to be in place for you to feel that it is a complete success?
• What does success on this project look like for you?
• How will you do that?
• How will you deal with that?
• What plans have you made to handle that?
• How is that working for you?
• How do you mean?
• What have you done to fix that?
• When you say (insert vague word here), what do you mean by that?
• How will you use that to your advantage?
• How will your toughest competitor react to that?
• Is that what you really want?

If your prospect still has trouble being specific, make some suggestions to help them. And if they really don’t know what they want, start by asking them what they don’t want. Then explain that your questions are intended to help you better solve their problems - and serve their needs.

Colleen Francis, Sales Expert, President and Founder of Engage Selling Solutions, since 2001. Colleen Francis is driven by a passion for people-motivating them to reach for the highest standards of success. Colleen trains sales and marketing professionals who want to strive to get to the top… and stay there. Her innovative, no-nonsense approach is based on applying what she has observed in her fifteen-plus years in sales-revealing the common business habits of the top 10% of sales performers in all organizations. Colleen’s approach works.that’s why New York-based Sales and Marketing Magazine has rated Engage Selling Solutions as one of the top-five most effective sales-training organizations in the market today.

Distinguished by the Canadian Professional Sales Association as a Certified Sales Professional (C.S.P.). Check out Colleen and Engage Selling at www.EngageSelling.com

© 2007 Engage Selling Solutions. All rights reserved.

Leadership has been defined as “the ability to inspire willing action”.

Emphasis is placed on the willing. But to understand leadership, we need to delve a little deeper than that.
One thing which experience has proven over and over again down through the ages is that when any group of people are thrown together for any length of time or for any project, a leader will emerge from the group - one to whom they will listen and give their confidence and support.

Their position on the organisation chart or their title alone cannot make a person a genuine leader. They must have certain traits and skills, or they will surely fail. In business, it has been shown again and again that these skills can be learned and the traits can be developed in any individual who is willing to exert an effort based on strong desire and a true hunger for success.

Generally, a leader or teacher does not actually “develop” another person. They encourage and inspire that person to develop themselves from within. Thus, leadership is, in a large sense, self-initiated.

Once we understand and identify the methods and characteristics of admired leaders, we can take steps to develop these skills and traits ourselves. We can analyse ourselves — honestly, ruthlessly, objectively – and identify which skills we need to acquire or improve (and those which we need to play down).

No One Is Perfect!

The perfect leader has yet to be born. We all have room for self-improvement. If we can agree upon what it takes to be a good leader - what are the traits of leadership, what are the skills - we will at least have made a good start. We should analyse every genuine leader we know and try to learn which qualities influenced us to consider them a good leader.

Tomorrow on the JF Guest Author Spot: The ebullient and highly energetic Colleen Francis.

Major Account Management is not a single act but a series of actions which link together to produce a powerful, professional and profitable result.

There are two ways of looking at this process. One is to examine each element of Major Account Management; the other is to create a model which can be applied flexibly but effectively across a range of situations. We will first look at the elements of Major Account Management.

We created this approach for a major institution that wanted to break down the different elements of the process to be sure they were doing everything as well as possible.

• Identify
• Understand
• Plan
• Influence
• Deliver
• Manage

Identify:

Many organisations do not know who their major accounts are. Certainly many of the people who manage the relationships do not know and even if they know, very few people understand why this customer is a major account but that one is not. A quick way to test this is to ask ten people in your organisation who your ten most important accounts are. You can be sure that you will receive more than ten answers. In one company we worked with, we received 56 different answers from 10 senior managers! The clarification of major accounts has been a critically important part of our work with a number of the organisations with whom we have worked.

Understand:

We need to understand our major accounts better than our ordinary customers. We need to understand the world they work in, the challenge of their markets, the competition they face etc. We need to understand the individual projects (be it fighting to win new business or managing an existing project for maximum profitability). Major Account management involves understanding who takes decisions and how, who are our competitors, how does our offering impact on the customer’s business? Those who manage, need to keep developing their skills of questioning and listening, of networking and analysing.

Plan:

If a customer is worth being called a major account, then they are worth a plan. It is of course possible to sell successfully in an unplanned way, there are always opportunities to be seized by chance. But if we are serious about developing a long term relationship and if this customer is really important to our success as a business, then we need to plan. We will look later at two types of planning. One of the most encouraging spin-offs in our work with clients is when we see the emergence of succinct, professional business plans for major accounts that cascade down into satellite plans for other parts of the business.

Influence:

There are many people to influence. We need to influence technical people and commercial people; we need to influence our customers, their clients and our colleagues. The major account manager often has little authority to tell people what to do. Instead he or she needs to influence and persuade.

Deliver:

It is good to plan and understand and influence, but our business will depend on our ability to deliver what we promise. This is often seen as the responsibility of customer service but in fact the whole organisation needs to be committed to delivering what the customer needs, the right quality, at the right time and to do it in such a way that the customer feels good about it.

Manage:

Any major account needs managing because success does not just happen. By manage, I mean doing all those things which make things go smoothly. It may be arranging a regular review meeting with the customer, or training the account team to understand the customer better or handling problems or managing complex projects. If we work hard on all six areas of account management and if we gain the trust of our customers, then we will greatly increase our chances of long term, sustainable success.

Another great week - I will review it in detail on Monday and fully update you - I promise.

Have a great w/e, wherever you are!

JF

The JF Guest Author Spot 

“Influencing Buyer Decisions” by Alvin Day

One of the most influential factors in your sales success is your ability to develop relationships. People use emotion in every buying decision. This principle holds true even for sales reps selling business to business, after all, even in a corporate environment the final decisions will still be made by a person. In your quest to develop good relationships with your buyers you do not have to be ingratiating or otherwise insincere, it is simply essential that you pay attention to the way your prospects feel about you, adding a personal element to your approach rather than treating every situation like a cold business transaction.

The significance of relationships in selling can never be underestimated. Whether you are a network marketer selling to your friends or a corporate sales person selling to a buyer, it is important to note that nobody sells to a company. People sell to people and emotions automatically enter into these decisions. How the buyer feels about the seller is bound to have an affect on the sale. In all of your sales endeavors you should ensure that you are polite, kind and gracious, but there is more that you can do to build a relationship in which you have great influence.

Take the following example: Kelly purchases a small gift products company that has a relationship with a prominent chain store retailer in her niche market of inspirational gift items. Shortly after buying the company, Kelly gets a call from the head buyer at this chain store informing her that he would like to return the latest seasonal items that did not sell during the special season. Kelly is incensed by this request especially when she sees how much product he expects to return. She tells him no, since all seasonal product sales are final and refuses to accept the return.

The head buyer at this corporation is hoping mad. It seems in his relationship with the previous owners, they had an unofficial agreement that allowed him to return all seasonal items not sold. Based on that relationship, he regularly stocked up all 300 of his stores knowing that there was virtually no risk in it for him. Now that this new owner was not accepting his return, the bottom line would be greatly affected by the products that didn’t sell during the special season. Even worse, he personally would look less than competent to his manager who would want an explanation for the loss.

Without knowing it, Kelly has just severed a relationship with an important buyer. This man, whose decisions oversee the stocking of 300 stores, will no longer take her calls, buy her product or see her outside sales reps. By the time Kelly realizes the impact of her decision, she cannot even get a meeting in which to try to make amends.

Action step: When in a crisis with a good customer, always focus on the impact that the outcome will have on your relationship.

Had Kelly calculated the cost of the return versus the profit of monthly invoices for 300 stores, she might have taken a different approach to her client’s request. The impact of her decision has gone beyond a mere business situation and become personal because the buyer now has to give an explanation to his boss for this mess. In the blink of an eye, the entire chain store is no longer available to Kelly, her products or her outside sales reps.

Preserving the friendship, association or goodwill of the buyer is often more important than the product or service itself. No one sells to a company and in all situations you must consider the impact of your actions on the person you are dealing with. Remember, we are only human, and as such rely on emotions in every decision. If you want to wield great influence, increase your effectiveness, or just enjoy the function of your sales job, make great efforts to develop good relationships with your buyers.

Alvin Day is a Sales Training and Personal Empowerment coach who has helped many sales professionals reach and exceed their goals. For more on Alvin Day’s Sales Training tools and resources visit his website:Sales Empowement Institute

Personal note: This article was voted “Top Sales Article Of The Week” at www.top10salesarticles.com and Alvin is making a habit of picking up this award.

My good friend Andrea Nierenberg is currently in China, working with some of the biggest names in Chinese industry and she very kindly sent me a short message to show off her recently acquired language skills. 

喂喬納森, 它怎麼去? 我真正地盼望銷售領導區域發射! 獲得許多樂趣這裡和非常學會。 快 Andrea

Of course, I responded immediately:

英國人、愛爾蘭人和蘇格蘭男子進入酒吧並且愛爾蘭人說……..

But you have probably already heard the one about the Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman so I won’t bore you

Today is a “Remarkable Day” it is the day on which, after months of build up, a really excellent new book is launched by a leadership guru and an incredible guy, my good buddy - Kevin Eikenberry: You can find full details by clicking on the image but if you would like to receive a signed copy, all you have to do is translate the message I received from Andrea - I have two copies available.

OK, today’s post deals with the message you want to convey when making a presentation:

This is the stage at which you can decide your headings and sub-headings and put them into a logical order. Your structure then begins to take shape. Essentially you go back to the notes you made during the ‘ideas’ stage and select which ones you wish to use - and then put them in the right order.

Remember you probably will not have time to tell your audience all you know about your subject – after all this is not an ‘information dump’ Use only what is relevant and what can be dealt with in the time at your disposal – this may involve a ruthless reduction exercise.

It is suggested that if possible leave the speech, once written, for 24 hours. Then re-read and revise, removing any jargon or unnecessarily flowery phases or faulty reasoning.

The actual notes that you speak from can be the final draft of the speech but this will normally cause you to read most or all of the presentation and the audience will find this dull.

It is much better, therefore, to read the final draft and put it to one side. Then, without referring to it, write short, key-word notes or, if you are very experienced, headings only, on to numbered post-cards.(Numbering your cards will prove to be an invaluable exercise in the unlikely event you drop them half way through your presentation!)

You can now re-look at the final draft to check that you have included all the major ideas on the cards, but be careful, the chances are that if you forgot that idea when making out the cards, you will forget it when you make the presentation.

And Finally -Final Notes: Unless you are a very good actor with a phenomenal memory, do not dispense with notes by memorising a speech ‘parrot-fashion’. Unless your audience are ornithologists, they do not want to listen to a parrot! Also, it is easy to lose your way when giving a memorised presentation and easier still to lose an audience.

Tomorrow, my guest is award winning author Alvin Day

JF Guest Author Spot

“How to Say Goodbye!” by Joanne S. Black

When it comes to difficult customers, you know the warning signs—they nickel-and-dime you on price, don’t return phone calls, tell you they’re the decision makers when they’re not, threaten you with your competitors, make unreasonable demands, and expect fast, complete, and reliable delivery of your service.

I call those customers PITAs: “pain in the ass” customers. PITA customers are never happy. They’re emotionally draining and they use up your valuable resources. Collect too many PITA customers and watch your profits dwindle—not a compelling scenario. Yet companies continue to accept this bad business, all the while thinking it’s better than no business.

But is it?

When organizations take bad business, they are paying a hidden opportunity cost—the opportunitylost to use their resources to go after the phenomenal clients they want and need to make money!Servicing a PITA customer takes away time we could useproviding something extra for our truly great customers.

How is it we end up with a few customers that drive us crazywhen we can see the warning signs a mile away? Sometimes it’sbecause we have a quota to meet, or our company insists we doa deal, or we think that we can turn a bad situation into a good one. We’re dreaming. Bad business is bad business. Period.

Salespeople frequently say that they will sell to “anyone who fogs a mirror.” Avoid that kind of thinking. We shouldn’t target just “anyone.” “Anyone” all too frequently turns out to be a PITA customer, the one who plays the nickel-and-dime game. You need to create a profile of your “Ideal Customer” so you can recognize perfect opportunities when they arise.

These Ideal Customers are those you want to serve and the ones you willbend head over heels for. You will also use this profile when you are asking people to refer you. Think of yourself as an artist—the more color and lines you put in your description, the easier it will be for others to recognize the picture of your Ideal Customer and refer them to you.

For a lot of salespeople, being too specific in describing their Ideal Customer may seem like they might be leaving good business on the table. We often think that if we don’t mention everything we do we’ll miss a sale. This is exactly the opposite of what happens. The more specific you are, the easier it will be for someone to refer you. A long list of the things you do blurs your image. Forsomeone to be able to refer you, they need a clear picture of you.

Create a description using the following categories:

Industry: In what industry does your company have a track record?

Geography: Where would these customers be based—regions of the United States, North America, Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa?

Size Company:How large would the company you would most like to work with be and how do you measure its size (i.e.: number of employees, revenue,age, geographical coverage)?

Business Unit or Function: What group of people within the company are your ideal contacts—CEOs, CIOs, COOs, HR, marketing?

Type of Person:What are the personality traits (sense of humor, responsible, dedicated, integrity) of your “Ideal Customer?”

Situation/Need: “What sort of situation is your ideal customer in that creates the need foryour help? Here are some ideas: “My salespeople aren’t performing, our teams are not working together, we’ve just acquired another company, we have difficulty recruiting the right talent, we don’t have enough clients, our systems are at capacity, we’ll be acquiring more companies.”

And if a prospect doesn’t meet your criteria: Say NO! A PITA prospect is just the beginning of a bad relationship. The downward spiral will have begun. The cost to you will be exorbitant—your resources will be drained, you won’t make money, and you will have lost the opportunity to focus on good business. Say “No!” and a big weight will be lifted off of your shoulders. And, I’ll bet that your “Ideal Customer” will be right there waiting for you.

Take the first step…
Build a referral system that will leave your competition in the dust.
Call Joanne Black at No More Cold Calling™ NOW! 415-461-8763.

Joanne S. Black

Joanne Black is America’s leading authority on referral selling and the author of No More Cold Calling™ The Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust, from Warner Business Books. She developed her No More Cold Calling practice in 1996 and now reaches thousands of people each year. Her Referral Selling System has increased the performance of many top companies including: California State Automobile Association, CCH Knowledge Point, Charles Schwab, Colliers International, KPMG, The Marlin Company, and The Mechanics Bank. Visit Joanne’s site here

Well what a week I had last week - and it looks like the next seven days are going to be equally hectic and challenging:Just eight days to the launch of you know what!

I was sad to relinquish the reigns at Leadership Turn, but as I said in my farewell post, with so many launches coming up, something has to give. It was fun and I made a lot of new friends, including one who is launching his fantastic new book on Wednesday - more about that then.

I completed the first phase of a challenging assignment with clients I had not worked with since 1996 and it was great to be invited back: We completed an ASP Profile exercise with fourteen key members of the team, to accurately determine specific requirements and I will now design and tailor a programme that meets their needs precisely - no scatter gun approach to sales team development for them!They would certainly subscribe to my thoughts in today’s post.  

Successful selling is definitely not about the “hit and run” sale. Sales achievers regard their relationships with key customers as a partnership and cultivate it as such. When customers face tough business challenges and complex technological choice, they rely on sales people who can assist them in making the right decisions.

The primary objective of a sales partnership has to be, to create and sustain a mutually productive relationship, which serves the needs of both parties, now and in the future. The key word here is symbiotic. Partnership does not mean eliminating the tension between buyer and seller; it means that top-performing salespeople know how to strike a balance between achieving immediate results and developing the relationship fully.

So Why Do We Need A Fresh Approach To Selling?
Most organisations have developed without objective analysis of their purpose and structure. The buying power in many industries is no longer evenly distributed - in a large number of markets a few big firms control the majority of purchases.
The development of new marketing techniques has meant that some tasks traditionally performed by the sales team can be more effectively handled by other methods. The prime objective of all sales staff is to gain business.

From an organisational point of view, however, how they all achieve their goals must be defined in order to identify what kind and the quality of skills that are required.

Tomorrow, my guest is good friend and fellow Top Sales Expert; America’s leading authority on referral selling and the author of the Amazon best seller “No More Cold Calling” - Joanne Black - be sure to join us.